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An illegal taxi driver convicted of the 2008 brutal kidnapping and murder of a Swedish student will be retried at a court of appeal this month, after claiming police fabricated evidence against him.

The 2008 murder of Susanna Zetterberg, a 19-year-old from Stockholm studying French and working part-time in a cafe in the French capital, caused widespread shock and disgust in France and Sweden after her partially burnt body was discovered near Paris.

Bruno Cholet, 57, was convicted of the kidnapping and murder after a trial in September 2012, but he consistently claimed that police had fabricated the evidence.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment but appealed the verdict.

His retrial will take place from May 13th to May 23rd at a court in Melun, a town outside Paris.

Zetterberg was last seen leaving a nightclub and entering a taxi in central Paris at around 4:45am on Saturday April 19th, 2008.

Later the same day her partially burnt body was discovered in the Chantilly forest, about 50 kilometres north of Paris. She had been shot at least four times in the head and had her hands tied behind her back with a brand of handcuffs sold in sex shops.

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The state of her body made it impossible to establish if she had suffered a sexual assault.